Jean Harlow in one scene with Hattie McDaniels of Gone With the Wind Fame:
Body double playing filming Harlow's role after her death:
Monday is my day off and this past Monday was cold, cloudy and very windy. So I watched Turner Classic Movies. And for the first time I watched Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in the 1937 movie, Saratoga.
I looked for a summary of the plot on the internet as I watched only to discover this was Jean Harlow's last motion picture and see died unexpectedly before the completion of the film. MGM thought of scrapping the movie or re-filming the parts with Harlow in them, but then they decided to use a double that looked like her, film her with binoculars over the double's face for the race course scenes and from a distance in other scenes or with her back to the camera or a large hat hiding her. Her voice was doubled too.
She died of kidney failure and some other mishaps at the age of 26, a rising star at MGM.
But it was a lesson on how movies are made too. There were two major scenes where she is written out altogether and the actors explain she's not there because she had other business to attend. This, of course, compromised the scenes as her role was central.
It was obvious too that various scenes are filmed out of context or the order in which they will appear.
There is a scene of a ball had a large house. Harlow's double is clearly in the house, but on the porch "outside" the house, Harlow is with another co-stair Lionel Barrymore. He was in the show earlier and it is clear that all the scenes with Harlow and Barrymore were filmed together no matter the sequence in the film. So the inside scene in the house, Harlow has died and a double portrays her, but outside the house, filmed before her death she is alive.
It was sad watching the first part of the film with her good acting knowing that while this was filmed she would be dead in about a month before she completed the movie.
One irony is that the last scene before her actual demise, she is playing a very sick person with a high fever and in fact while playing this scene she was actually sick.
But the very last scene of the movie, Harlow is in it clearly filmed before her illness and death but as the last scene.
What is the religious point? You will die, young or old. You will be judged and you will go to your eternal reward, heaven or hell, the four last things.
And when you die, someone will replace you, maybe not as well as you would have done it, but replaced you will be.
But in real life, everything happens in sequence.
6 comments:
Jean Harlow remains a mystery decades after her death. She was one of the screen's first sex symbols (at least in sound films), yet those who knew her said that she was actually quite down to earth. It was said that in real life, she was rather plain, but with the right makeup and setups, the camera loved her (rather like Nicole Kidman today). Even though she died at 26, she had already been married 3 times and was rumored to have been in a steamy affair with Clark Gable.
In the end--none of that matters. The end comes for all of us and we never know when that will be. If you are prepared in advance, then you don't have to prepare.
Jean Harlow was once introduced to Margot Asquith and mispronounced the latter's Christian name to rhyme with 'got'. She was quickly corrected: 'The "t" is silent, as in "Harlow".'
God rest Harlow's silent and missing "t" soul!
Dear Fr. Allan, PLEASE proofread your submissions. They sometimes make no sense whatever. Thanks.
Fr Allan's spelling can be wayward, but everything he has posted on this thread makes perfect sense.
This is what I write or wrote on another post’s comment section:
Howe many tymes due ay have to wrote that I am liberated from righting praper spelyn and grahamer as I am a madern persyn hoo prephers hys oun thrut.
Und I cain’t a Ford n aditor and ay donnot lyke dueing et miself.
Post a Comment